Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

in this dump, some kind of celebration, but Jims, who hadn’t spoken to her except to say “I will” quickly said good- bye to everyone and drove her back to Westminster.

At last he addressed her. “Now we shall have to make arrangements for you and your children to decamp to Fredington Crucis.”

Chapter 24

THIS WEEK, THOUGH Josephine wouldn’t remember, Minty would have worked at Immacue for twenty years. The end of May, it had been, when she was eighteen. As she started on the shirts, she tried to work out how many she must have ironed in those years. Say three hundred a week for fifty weeks a year, two being taken off for holidays, times twenty made 300,000 shirts. Enough to dress an army, Auntie had said when she’d done ten years. White ones, blue-and-white striped, pink-and-white, yellow-and-white, gray, and blue, there was no end to it. She picked the first one off the pile. It was light-and-dark-green, a rare combination.

As often happened when she let herself think about Auntie the ghost voice spoke to her. “It’s not three hundred thousand, you’re wrong there. You never did shirts on a Saturday, not when you first went there. Not for a good two years. And there was days when you never did fifty on account of there wasn’t fifty to do. That figure’s more like a hundred fifty thousand than three hundred.”

Minty didn’t say anything. Answering Auntie relieved her feelings but it caused trouble, too. Yesterday, when she’d shouted back, Josephine had come running out, wanting to know if she’d burnt herself. As if a person who’s ironed 300,000 shirts would burn herself.

“She ought to have a celebration for you just the same. She’s bone selfish, never thinks of anyone but herself and that husband of hers. If she has a baby you’ll find yourself looking after it. She’ll bring it in here and ask you to keep an eye on it while she goes to the shops or pops round the Chinese. That Ken, he may be over the moon, but he’ll not babysit. Men never do.”

“Go away,” said Minty, but very quietly.

“Now Mrs. Lewis knows more about these things than me. She’s had the experience. Giving birth, I mean. I had all the trouble and expense of rearing you but I never had the labor pains. If Jock hadn’t been killed in that train crash you’d maybe have had a baby yourself. You’d have liked to be a grandma, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Lewis?”

This time Minty couldn’t restrain herself. “Will you shut up? I wish you’d stayed deaf. She’s not going to have a baby and neither am I. Take that old woman out of here. I don’t want her near me.”

Josephine came out, as she was bound to. “Who were you talking to, Minty?”

“You,” Minty said boldly. “I thought you called me.”

“When do I ever call you when you’re doing the ironing? Now look, I’m going to nip out for a while and I’m leaving you in charge, right? I want to have a bit of lunch with Ken. Can I bring you anything back?”

Minty suppressed a shudder. She eat food someone else had touched? Food she hadn’t seen being bought? Josephine would never learn. “No, thanks. I’ve got my own sandwiches.”

She didn’t start on them till she’d finished the shirts. They were chicken sandwiches, made with white bread she’d sliced herself-you could never tell who or what had done the slicing with cut bread-fresh Irish butter and chicken she’d cooked and carved herself. She’d used the remaining big knife, twin of the one she’d had to get rid of because you could never tell how clean boiling made anything. If she ever saw that Mrs. Lewis she might need to use the big knife as she’d used the one that got rid of Jock’s ghost.

But she’d never seen Mrs. Lewis. Auntie manifested herself every so often, though she was never as clear and solid as Jock had been. Furniture and doors were always visible through Auntie. Sometimes she was no more than an outline, the middle part of her just a watery shape that shifted and waved like the mirage on the road she’d seen from the bus last week. Minty thought she might go away altogether if she resumed putting flowers on her grave. If she went back to praying to her. But why should she? She’d never defied Auntie while she was alive but she thought it was time to assert herself. Why should she be tied to that for the rest of her life, spending all that money and arranging those flowers, just to please a ghost?

She wasn’t even particularly afraid of Auntie. That must be because she’d known her so well and known, too, that Auntie wouldn’t do her any harm. Jock, after all, had already harmed her, helping himself to her money like that. And when he came back as a ghost he’d sometimes glared fiercely at her, opening his eyes wide and baring his teeth. But it was Mrs. Lewis showing herself that she really feared and she didn’t know why. If the old woman ever actually addressed her instead of always speaking to Auntie, she felt she might not be so alarmed by the thought of it. Mrs. Lewis had never done this, but attached herself to Auntie like her shadow and, like a shadow, was only there at certain times and on certain days. For instance, this morning there had been no word from her and when Auntie asked her a question she hadn’t replied. That might mean she wasn’t there and Auntie, for purposes of her own, had been speaking to the empty air. On the other hand-and this was what frightened Minty in a way she couldn’t have entirely explained-she might have accompanied Auntie from wherever they lived, a heaven, a hell, or an unknown, unnamed abode of shades, yet kept silent. This was hateful to Minty, who imagined her lurking unseen behind Auntie, taking Auntie away from her, noting everything Minty did, making judgments on her appearance and her home. Biding her time, but for what she couldn’t tell.

With the arrival of Josephine in the ironing room Auntie had disappeared and she hadn’t come back. Minty finished her sandwich and went to wash her hands. She washed her face as well because she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t got an invisible smear of butter on her chin. While she was in the washroom the bell rang on the outer door. She could hardly believe her eyes. Mr. Kroot’s sister was standing in the middle of the shop, clutching an armful of dirty clothes she’d pulled out of a very old and worn carrier bag.

Gertrude Pierce-was that her name?-was as surprised to see Minty as Minty was to see her. “I’d no idea you worked here.” Implicit in her remark was the unspoken If I had I’d never have come in. Her voice was low, with a sort of growl in it and an accent Minty couldn’t place. Very recently, perhaps on the way here, she’d had her hair color touched up and it was as red and glossy as the scarlet satin jacket she deposited on the counter along with a green woolly jumper and a pair of purple trousers. Minty could smell them from six feet away. She wrinkled up her nose, a change of expression Gertrude Pierce wasn’t slow to notice. “If you don’t want to do them I’ll take them elsewhere.”

Josephine wouldn’t like her to turn away business. “We’ll do them.” Minty had to answer her, but the thought of Auntie finding out that she’d actually spoken to Mr. Kroot’s sister made her tremble. Her hand shook as she worked out the cost of dry-cleaning, wrote the sum down on a card and the name “Mrs. Pierce,” and passed it across the counter. “Ready by Saturday.”

Gertrude Pierce studied the card with suspicion and something like wonder. It was as if she speculated as to what divining powers or superhuman insight Minty must possess to have known her name. “I’ll have my carrier back, thank you.”

It lay on the counter, a black bag bruised and scratched by the hundred occasions on which it had been used since the assistant at Dickins and Jones put newly bought goods into it for the first time. Minty pushed it an inch or two nearer Gertrude Pierce. Mr. Kroot’s sister waited, perhaps for her to bring it over and curtsy, Minty thought. She went into the ironing room and slammed the door. Presently she heard heavy footsteps and the exit bell ring.

“I told you not to speak to her,” said Auntie. “I could hardly believe my ears. You should have pretended she wasn’t there, not given her the satisfaction.”

“I’d like to pretend you’re not there.” With Josephine absent, she could answer back as much as she liked. “I want you to go away for good and take Jock’s old mum with you.”

“You put nice flowers on my grave like you used to and I’ll think about it. Tulips are over, whatever the florist may say. I suppose roses are too much money.”

“Nothing’d be too much to get rid of you,” said Minty rashly.

And when she left for home at five-thirty she bought roses, a dozen white ones, expensive enough but cheaper than they would have been at the cemetery gates. It was a dull evening and just inside the gates, the building she’d never noticed before with its pillars and porticoes in weathered gray stone looked as if it had been there for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Minty, who’d last week seen a television program about ancient Rome, wondered if it dated from that time. It was a smaller version of the great gloomy crematorium and, like it, its doors were shut. Inside, the air would be dark and smelly and always cold. She shut her eyes and turned her back on it.